Mary Smiling over All the Good Reviews!

Katia Grubisic writes in the Montreal Review of Books: "Mary Soderstrom might just be my new favourite writer. She’s been writing for years, and we’ve been reading her for years, but meeting her reveals an energy that is contagious, and a humility that should be. Soderstrom in person is as unassuming, open, and delightful as she is erudite and elegant on the page.... "

Great Reviews for Road through Time

This just in: a terrific review of Road through Time in the April 15 Library Journal that ends: "VERDICT This accessible work about an integral aspect of human life is a must-read for all interested in society, past and present."

And Publishers' Weekly also is laudatory:"Soderstrom constructs a...layperson’s guide in bright, conversational prose, skillfully using her own experiences and just-so stories about the peoples of the past as springboards to exploring humankind’s long history of migration." Publishers' Weekly"

Mary Soderstrom's fifth Non-fiction book will be available soon!

First Review of Road through Time

What Musicians Say about River Music

It's always nice when people that you write about like what you write. I'm no musician, and one of the big unknowns about River Music was what musicians might think. In fact, I was so unsure that I went out of my way not to ask musicians I knew what their opinion was.

But to my great delight, the reaction of musicians has been spontaneous and very positive. Here are three:

"Gloria, is tough and not always likable and yet, I had to recognize some of her difficult choices as merely typical of what a musician, especially a woman, has to do in order to succeed in the competitive world of music."

Now Available: Making Waves, The Continuing Portuguese Adventure

Buy through Pay Pal on Vehicule's site, or at better bookstores

The Walkable City Keeps on Going: New Review in the Canadian Literature

"Soderstrom would readily admit that her general argument in favour of pedestrian-friendly communities is not a new one: walkability is a firmly established principle of sustainability-oriented planning. However, the book serves as a fine, up-to-date introduction to this still-pertinent issue. Soderstrom’s judiciously selective overview of the history of walking and its changing place in urban life (from Roman settlements to nineteenth-century Paris to post-war North American suburbs to newer master-planned communities in Brazil and Singapore) makes engaging, informative reading for the generalist or readers new to the topic."Maia Joseph in Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticsm and Review.

The Walkable City Gets Praise from Urbanist Christopher Leinberger

"Mary Soderstrom's The Walkable City addresses one of the most important environmental, economic, social, public health and foreign policy issues of our day that is also the most unexpected and simplest; building walkable urban places. Using an approach I personally enjoy, taking a long historical perspective from pre-history through the various ages of city building, Ms. Soderstrom demonstrates that we as a civilization know how to build walkable cities. We just have to speed up our efforts."Christopher Leinberger, The Brookings Institution

The Walkable City: Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacobs Street

Now available from independent booksellers and on Amazon.ca. Véhicule Press. ISBN: 978-1-55065-243-7

More about The Violets of Usambara

Kim Barry Brunhuber seems to like The Violets of Usambara a lot: his review "These diamonds are a girl's worst enemy" appeared in The Globe and Mail Saturday, June 14, 2008. He says "the novel is a wonderfully matter-of-fact portrayal of two pragmatic characters struggling to find themselves and reconnect with each other." Check it out.

The book is available at independent bookstores and Chapters/Indigo stores throughout Canada and online through Amazon.ca, which will ship to the US.

Gardening in Quebec from a Brazilian Perspective

Loaded Web

Copyright notice

All text and photos in this blog are the work of Mary Soderstrom unless otherwise indicated, and so are copyright in her name under Canadian copyright laws. Please have the courtesy to ask before you reproduce.

Monday, 10 March 2008

Burundi Food Production Shows Modest Improvement, but Half the Population Goes Hungry

Sobering thought: Burundi’s population has grown 33 per cent since 1988, but food production has dropped 41 per cent. The figures appear in a report prepared jointly by Burundi's Ministry of Agriculture, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), following a joint assessment in January.

Things improved slightly during the last harvest—up 2 per cent over the previous year’s—but still 600,000 of the nation’s 8 million citizens will need food aid since there is a shortfall of 486,000 tonnes of grain. A third of the population consumed only 1,400 kilo-calories per person per day while fully half of all households had what the report called “adequate, consumption in terms of quality, quantity and diversity.”

Nevertheless there is some good news. “Concerted efforts by the government and FAO…led to a gradual improvement of cassava production, a revival of large-scale gardening as a source of food and income for vulnerable households and a better banana and sweet potato crop,” the report adds. It also calls for “sustained donor support” for the country, which is” emerging from more than a decade of civil strife.’

Bujumbura, Burundi’s capital, is the scene for part of my new novel The Violets of Usambara. That we are in the middle of planning a couple of book launch events where there will be good wine and tasty nibblies is almost embarrassing when considered against the background of this report. But that is, of course, one of the concerns of the book: what is the right thing to do, and can we undo what has been done in the past?